The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  He glances back ruefully at the tower on the distant harbor, the once-proud Lighthouse. The Pharos. Two-thirds of its former size only, already wracked by earthquakes, it still stands proud and resolute, mocking him. Mocking his earlier attempt to plumb its secrets.

  “Failure,” he mutters . . .

  . . . as men holding torches and descend a dark stairway, passing two huge statues and stand before a wall etched with seven symbols.

  He climbs back up the stairs, having commanded his men to turn the symbols, hoping what the old Chinese philosopher told him about the alchemical combinations will work.

  But while the door opens, it isn’t enough. Only a trick, a ruse. A test—one that has found him wanting. Forty men die. Some burned to death, others drowned. Forty is enough. The Pharos is too strong, and Temujin is not worthy—not yet. But he will be. When the world is his, when the keys are his. Then, maybe then, he will try again. He will truly earn the Way into the Pharos, the path to the ultimate treasure.

  So now he rides, his horse kicking up sand and creating dervishes that his followers burst through and scattered. Finally, he arrives at a small collection of huts, altars, stones and markers.

  He dismounts before his horse even stops, running ahead, outpacing his men who finally catch up with him at an unassuming hillock under a mass of large stones no different from dozens of others.

  Temujin reaches into his burka and pulls out a scroll, which he promptly unrolls, revealing a crudely drawn map. “Here!” he shouts. “It is just as I drew in my vision. Here, beside six other markers, between two blank obelisks.

  “Here,” he says again, turning to his men, “is Alexander’s tomb. Dig! Keep anything of value you find, except for the stone, the one that looks like this.” He reaches for the cord around his neck and lifts the charm he took from Koneurgenc, the one from Cyrus’s tomb, a tiny piece of green stone shaped like a pyramid. “It will be on the body, around his neck maybe, or set in a ring. Bring it to me.”

  Temujin steps away.

  He kneels on the hot sand, and while his men work he meditates on his life, his future. His destiny.

  #

  Alexander Crowe awoke in the back of the jeep just as it came to a grinding halt.

  Xavier Montross looked back, smiling broadly. “We’re here!”

  #

  Khenti Province, Inner Mongolia, 7:30 P.M.

  As their guide drove them over the rough terrain, Montross stared with feigned interest at the scenery, the lush grasslands, the forests of pine, the flocks of sheep and cows, the lone camel. All the while, he had his thoughts primed for just one thing.

  And while he waited, he occasionally reached inside the buttons of his shirt to feel the small triangular stone set as a charm on a silver necklace. He felt its power, sensed it tremble at his touch, the same as the Emerald Tablet. One and the same material, he had realized with excitement right away, after Nina had delivered it from the Petroneum. One of three just like it.

  The other two were calling, reaching out for their brother.

  After sixty miles in the jeep, cutting through rough grasslands, crossing meandering streams and navigating boggy marshes, they stepped out under a darkening sky and stretched, gazing up on the rising hillocks and toward the mountain range, and then back the way they had come over the vast steppes leading back to the Mongolian capital.

  They had arrived at Burkhan Khaldun.

  Their driver and guide, Nilak Borogol, led them to an encampment of a half-dozen felt tents—yurts as they were called. “This was all part of the Ikh Khorig, the Great Taboo,” he explained. “For centuries, this one hundred-square-mile area was defended ruthlessly. Trespassers were turned away—or killed.” He made a smug face. “Now, the government permits pilgrimages, and even allows tourists and foreigners entrance.”

  “Foreigners like us?” Alexander said in a low voice.

  Montross cut off Nilak’s response with a question. “Forbidden because the tombs of the great Khans are supposed to be here?” He spoke in a rushed voice, trying to sound like a naïve tourist. “Genghis, his sons Jin and Odai, and grandson, Kublai Khan?”

  Nilak smiled, and in the dying light over the cooling winds, Montross could see the tattoo just peeking out over the guide’s sweater. “Yes,” Nilak said. “But it is sacred for many reasons. Its closeness to the great Blue Heaven, for one. Its majestic scenery, the life-giving rivers: the Kherlen and the Odon. But also it was here that Temujin, Chinggis Khan himself, while still a boy, evaded the vengeance of his father’s killers. The mountain sheltered him among its forests and hills, preserving him for his destiny.”

  “So it was a place he never forgot,” Montross said.

  “His father was killed,” Alexander said, repeating what he had heard. “And he survived? Now I see what made him so cruel to everybody.” He shivered in his hooded red sweatshirt.

  “Not cruel,” said Nilak defensively, “merely just. He was no sadist. While other conquerors delighted in the torture and debasement of their defeated enemies, Temujin only doled out justice to those who had defied him. He once said to the sultan of the Kharmezhm Empire, ‘You have greatly sinned upon the world and your own people. Why else would God have sent someone like me to destroy you?’”

  Alexander smiled, then gave Montross a cold look. “I like that. A lot.”

  “Yes, it’s all very Homeric.” Montross pulled back strands of his red hair into a neat ponytail. “But still a little paranoid, right? He made sure no one could ever find his grave, venerate his body.”

  “Oh, we venerate him,” Nilak said, fingers balling into fists. “Through his relics, his statues. His mausoleums. There are specific holy days of worship. Incense and songs, rituals.”

  “And what of his body?” Montross glanced at the hills and the steep ascent of the sacred mountain before them, rising to a flattened peak about seven thousand feet high. “Where is it?”

  Nilak regarded him coolly as the breezes let up. “No one knows.”

  “But there are many theories, right?” Montross’s voice had lost its naiveté. “And these other camps here—Americans? Come looking for the same thing?”

  “They have gone,” Nilak said with a dose of satisfaction. “Last month, and left their tents, some of their supplies. Gone the way of the Japanese archaeologists in the 1990s, who brought their ground-penetrating radar, their satellite survey maps and their tools, and found nothing. Some graves, but only of those more recent burials.”

  Xavier turned his face to the mountain, listening to the wind sizzling through the firs. “They were looking in the wrong spot.”

  He gazed at the deceptively difficult ascent, to be undertaken only with practiced horses who could navigate the steep rocky hillsides. “The Wall, right? Almsgivers Wall. Discovered by that Japanese team and dating to a much older era. It was the only area the government permitted them to search. They weren’t allowed on the peak or at the southern area called the Threshold, where hundreds of stone piles remain and lingering traces of a temple can be seen. And, what of other requests by similar, well-funded projects? Teams hoping to use satellite magnetometry to search for subsurface disturbances in the soil, a technique that would indicate areas that might have ditches—or tombs carved out of the ground? What about those? Why are the permissions not coming? What are they hiding?”

  Nilak’s eyes turned cold, the blue leeching out into black, mirroring the great expanse of cloudless sky overhead. “Who are you, sir?”

  Montross spread out his arms, smiling innocently. “Just a man and his son, out for a grand hike into history.”

  Nilak stared at Alexander, considered the boy for a moment, then raised a hand, clenching his fingers into fists. At once, two Mongolian men emerged from the nearest tent.

  Both had AK-47s slung over their shoulders, weapons which they promptly unhooked and turned toward Montross as they approached.

  Montross noted the tattoos on their necks. “Ah,” he said, “the Darkhad come to
greet us.”

  Nilak held out a restraining hand and his men paused. A dog whined from inside the nearest tent, sounding more like a wolf, and Montross wondered if there were more men inside.

  “You’ve come for the Great Khanite, the valley of the Khans,” said Nilak. “It was obvious the moment you landed in Ulaan Baatar. And your son here is no son. Although, he bears some resemblance.”

  Alexander frowned. “What?”

  “But it does not matter. The grave of my lord will never be found. He will remain undisturbed for all time.”

  Montross blinked at him. “Why?”

  “It was his wish.”

  Shrugging, Montross said, “Wishes usually go unfulfilled. Now tell me, where is it?”

  “You think we know?”

  “Of course, you do,” Montross said. “You—I also knew you from the moment you volunteered to be our guide. You are of the line of Mubuqoi and Boroochi, Temujin’s favorite generals. The leaders of five hundred families who tended the lands in this area. Your master gave your ancestors special privileges in return for your promise to guard his remains, his relics, and to continue his worship.” Montross lowered his head, his eyes drilling into Nilak’s. “You know.”

  “That was eight hundred years ago. So many generations. Memories fade.”

  “Not this memory,” Montross said. “You’ve succeeded in a great game of deception, clouding the minds of your leaders and your people, the people of China and Mongolia alike, as well as the world. From the beginning, the Darkhad created false rumors, inciting historians and explorers, such as Marco Polo himself, into quoting prefabricated fantasy and outright misdirection. Throwing out names of fake mountains and imaginary rivers, providing fodder for future treasure seekers to chase their proverbial tails. Classic misdirection.”

  Nilak’s gaze never wavered. “Who are you? How do come by such beliefs?”

  Montross merely smiled.

  “Very well,” said Nilak, glancing around at the wide expanse of the hills, the steppes where once the Golden Horde, the greatest army in the world, had launched their campaigns, conquering kingdom after kingdom and ruling the largest collection of people that had ever fallen under one leader. Nilak looked over the vast grasslands, hills and bogs; the empty, skeletal forest of pines burned in a great fire decades ago. Desolate but for a few packs of roving sheep and cows.

  Nilak sighed and spoke two words.

  “Kill them.”

  #

  Alexander cried out as the men raised the machine guns, looking to Montross for help, for some sort of saving word or plea, but Xavier just stood with his arms outstretched, still smiling.

  He’s insane, completely whacko! Alexander thought, believing it was to be the last thought of his too-short life, before joining his mother, hopefully in Heaven.

  Two gunshots snapped the night air. Crisp, loud, echoing off the hills of the Burkhan Khaldun. Alexander clenched his eyes shut, but not before first seeing something out of the corner of his eye: a dark form slipping out from the back of the jeep, from under the tarps and equipment they had packed in the cargo hold at Ulaan Baatar.

  His eyes popped back open just as Nilak’s head whipped around to see his companions drop silently, guns unfired.

  “Thank you, Nina,” said Montross, lowering his arms. His gaze never left Nilak’s. And his smile never wavered, not until Nina walked right up to their guide and placed the muzzle of her still-warm Beretta against the back of his head.

  “Now,” Montross said, “where were we?”

  #

  “Check the tents,” he said after he had disarmed Nilak, taking away the guide’s sleek stainless steel Ruger SR9c. “Make sure we’re alone.”

  Nina’s head cocked, eyes narrowing. She nodded and approached the first yurt, one with an orange glow inside.

  “I will never betray the Khan,” said Nilak, still locked in a stare with Montross. “Never.”

  Montross shrugged. He kept the Ruger pointed at the Darkhad while he reached into the pack slung over his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. We could torture you. Nina is an expert at such things. And out here, no one will hear your pitiful cries. But such tactics are uncomfortable for me, and unnecessary. Especially when I have this.”

  He pulled out the object, glowing with a shimmering emerald aura, and for the first time, Nilak gave a reaction, as if a jolt ripped through his body. “Impossible.”

  Montross cocked his head. “I see you know what this is. Why do you say impossible?”

  “No one could penetrate the seal.”

  “Why not? Because your Temujin failed?”

  The Darkhad seethed. “Only because he had other demands on his time.”

  Montross nodded. “Provinces to keep in line, adversaries to crush, I understand. So much to do, and all of it so much more important than the Truth.”

  Nina came out of the first tent, then headed to the next.

  Nilak said, “Nothing was more important than the truth, not to Temujin. It was why he called for the great philosopher-mage Chi-Chan from China to study the seven symbols his men discovered under the tower in Alexandria.”

  “Lot of good that did,” Montross said, hefting the tablet. “Let me guess, you lost a few battalions there, eh? Before giving up? But regardless, we’ve got it. We did what your great leader could not.”

  Nilak stared, then slowly nodded. But after a moment, he let his lips curl back into a smile. “But it is not enough, yes? You cannot read what you hold, cannot gain its secrets. Not without—”

  “Without the keys.” Montross sighed. “Keys your master spent a lifetime trying to find. A search which your sacred book, the Secret History of the Mongols, fails to mention.”

  “Then how do you know of it?”

  “I”—he pulled Alexander closer to him—“we have our ways.”

  Nina came out of a tent and headed for the next.

  “I have seen,” Montross continued, “how your master subjugated the peoples of Persia, the world of Babylon, and took from there some of the greatest artifacts. Pieces he used to bargain for the lives of their princes. I’ve seen how the great Khan learned of the keys, and once the truth took hold, he would not let it rest. Having found one key, he sought the others. One of which was located in Bodrum, Turkey.”

  “The Mausoleum,” Nilak whispered. “You killed him, my cousin.” It wasn’t a question.

  Montross fingered the charm around his neck. “Not personally, but I had a feeling he might not make it.”

  “Nevertheless, you will pay.”

  “Oh? I didn’t think vengeance was your thing. Single-minded and all.”

  Nilak glared at him. “Vengeance is most assuredly permitted, as long as it doesn’t interfere with our mission.”

  Montross held up the tablet. “Oh yes it will. I am close. I have seen many burials, many elaborately staged ceremonies with white tents, rituals and the Khan’s standard. But thanks to your infernal exercises, where I know you’ve spread out his relics, buried some here, some there, and the true treasure only in one place, I don’t know exactly where it is, where the two keys have been kept. Except that they are on his body. That much I’m certain of. But I want you to know this one thing whether or not it helps in making your decision. I don’t want or care for the rest of your hero’s treasure. I just want those keys.”

  Nilak said nothing.

  “Tell me,” Montross said, “and you live. You can continue to preserve the secret. Go on playing your little mind-trick games with a billion people. I want the keys, and you’re going to—”

  Nina screamed.

  Something punched through the last tent, a small hole made by an arrow launched from a composite bow, taking her in the shoulder. She dropped her weapon, grunting, the arrow lodged in her flesh. And as Montross swung his gun around, the tent flaps burst open and a bright white stallion erupted from inside, bearing a cloaked rider, a dark-haired woman slinging a bow over her shoulder as she gripped the reins and gallop
ed ahead.

  Nina dodged, then picked up her gun with her other hand, turned and aimed. But the horse leapt, darting in front of Montross, then around so the rider could reach down and scoop up Nilak before turning and racing in a white flash to the woods.

  Shots rang out, both Nina and Montross emptying their magazines after the fleeing horse. Bullets exploded into tree trunks and branches, kicked up sparks on the rocks as the horse wove in and out of the trees. With her last shot, Nina gave a smile of satisfaction.

  A cry followed the dying echoes of gunfire as Nilak tumbled off the back of the horse, hit the ground and rolled. The horse turned and Montross had a glimpse of a face below the hood—a feminine, chiseled jaw line with sharp cheekbones and haunting eyes. Then, as Nina reloaded, the horse turned and fled into the safety of the trees.

  For a moment, she had a clear shot at the rider’s retreating figure, and was about to fire when Alexander threw himself at her knees, bringing her down and then avoiding a backward slap at his face.

  “Damn it!” Nina pushed him away, sprang up, holstered her gun, and then reached for the arrow in her shoulder. She grimaced, and then yanked it out with a muffled scream.

  Barely showing a reaction, she scowled as she applied pressure to the wound. “Xavier, I’m sorry. I missed her.”

  “Forget it,” Montross said, listening to the sounds of clawing hooves, the horse racing up the hill, where the jeep couldn’t follow. “Check on Nilak. And get on the sat-phone and call in the others.” In addition to Colonel Hiltmeyer and his squad of five soldiers, they had secured ten hand-picked mercenaries, ex-Chinese soldiers, dissidents whose loyalty to the highest bidder far outweighed their loyalty to an eight hundred-year-old dead man.

  “They’re waiting beyond the ridge, as ordered,” Nina said, after making the call. “And should be able to get here in twenty minutes.”

  They approached the fallen Darkhad, Montross dragging Alexander along with him. Nilak groaned and squirmed, his legs twitching. The bullet had caught him between the shoulder blades.